Warrioreuel
- 50
- 18
Small update. I checked the room at 7 this morning. Door has been open a foot for a week now with a small floor fan. Finally for the first time the CO2 level was 375. I thought oh good what ever was going on has finally subsided. I closed the door and 4 hours later the CO2 was 1050 ppm. I am leaning towards the concrete either off gasing or something under it is generating CO2. Here is another perhaps important piece that i just realized could be a factor. I like to keep my young plants at a humidity of 70% or so. The humidifier I have used in the past just makes a huge mess when you use it, spits water every where making it hard to locate it knowing it will soak the walls and any other equipment near it. So as a stop gap measure i watered down the bare concrete floor with my regular 160ppm tap water. This works wonderfully at keeping the humidity up and its a cheap and easy fix to raise humidity. I have not done this now in a week or so since i realized my CO2 levels were so sky high. So i don't know but maybe the concrete gives off CO2 when its wet. I know it absorbs water like a sponge. Too hard to cover the floor in plastic at this point with the system all setup. However, when the room is empty again I will paint the floor to try and seal it. CO2 absorbent will be here this week. Will filter all incoming air through that before bubbling it through the water and see if this helps. Leaving the door open and lowering the CO2 levels has helped tremendously but still they suffered the initial damage and are now off to a really slow start. Thinking back i never had this problem when i had seedlings just in a garage with a 40 years old concrete floor. Again i am suspecting the new concrete or something under it off gassing. This room is 10x20 with 12 foot ceilings so the CO2 rising from 375 to 1050 in 4 hours is substantial. If after trying the absorbent to filter the air fails to lower the level then I will drain the whole thing, disassemble it and put down plastic. I prefer paint but don't want to risk fumes at this point. Side note, I keep water temps at 65-66 degrees.